Hello, everyone! My newest book, Brother Giovanni's Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born is now available. The publishing company, Eerdman's interviewed me for a blog post on their website about how I came up with the idea for the book.

I read something about how the pretzel was invented several years ago, and it was something like this:

Most sources say the pretzel was invented around 610 A.D. by a monk in either northern Italy or southern France who twisted leftover bread dough into arms crossed in prayer. He gave it as a little reward (pretiola in Latin) to children who learned their prayers. As the years went by, the pretiola became known in Austria and Germany as bretzel. When it crossed the ocean to America it became known as the pretzel.

To write the story I had to first create the character of the monk who was the baker. I knew he would be a fantastic baker, a sweet kindly man I named Brother Giovanni . . . eventually. Read the full post to learn more about how I got to know Brother Gio and how the pretzel was invented to the delight of children and adults everywhere even centuries later.